Eyes and the Impossible

I don't trust human authors who say that in contrast to other animal stories, the animals in their story are just animals, not stand-ins for humans. Especially if this story is then about a dog and rarely even mentions smell as a way of knowing what is going on in the world. Sure, this dog's job is seeing, and smell is mentioned some times, but there were a few scenes where I was very confused why the dog had to go closer to see something, when he should have smelled it much earlier imo. I live with cats, and their sense of smell is not as good as that of dogs, but even they do magic shit like simply knowing which one is the belly rub carpet, months after the last cat lived there, who liked this carpet for belly rubs. Also, I think the life of a trash eating park dog is maybe painted as more fun than it actually is. I know happy calm healthy street dogs exist, but got the impression that's mostly ones that are cared for by humans. And since there's no mention of this dog hunting, I have to assume trash is his only food source.

That aside, I really liked this story. Johannes is a free dog living in a park and part of a big community of squirrels, sea gulls, bison, turtles, raccoons etc (but not ducks, nobody likes the ducks). He appreciates art so much that he gets captured once while entranced by a painting. But the others rescue him. That's just how it works. A bunch of stuff happens, and they always deal with it. And it's by far not as predictable as I thought halfway through.

What I like most is that animals count and estimate numbers, but are really bad at it. That feels very relatable.